Episodes

Romanticizing The Process vs Planning The Process
In this episode:
Is joy the point of writing? There are so many things one can feel when they write, and the deep level satisfaction of engaging and wrestling with the work is what most of us eventually feel - in addition to joy, of course. Any art, writing included, it an iterative process. Most artists find themselves going back again and again to their work, changing and improving and making it better before it's finally finished.
Mel...

TK
I learned about TK from Author Accelerator book coach Michael Raymond. The letters TK are a placeholder. They are writer speak for "to come." Those two letters aren't found next to each other in the English language. Except in writers' manuscripts, that is.
Michael told me early on in my writing (way early on in my writing) that if I didn't know the name of the street that my main character lived on I could always just write "TK" and that Jennie would pee her pants in excitement....

In this episode:
Grief and Writing with Roland Comtois
Today Abby and Mel talk to Roland Comtois: medium, nurse, and author of the books And Then There Was Heaven, Sixteen Minutes and the upcoming The Purple Papers and the Stories Behind Them. Roland describes his mission with his medium work as guiding people through grief, through loss, regret and disappointment by helping them hear the messages from their loved ones who have passed on.
Roland's first book is a memoir detailing his...

In today’s episode:
Recommended Reading (and Journaling):
After This: When Life Is Over, Where Do We Go? By Claire Bidwell Smith And Then There Was Heaven, A Journey of Hope and Love By Roland M. Comtois This book was written by the medium I saw.
One Line a Day: A Five-Year Memory Book By Chronicle Books Staff This is the journal I use and the same one Melanie references in the episode.

Let's give those voices of doubt we all carry about our writing a mental slap in the face. Jennie works to help writers turn up the volume on those voices that say, "YES I CAN!" Today she encourages Melanie to express what it felt like as she wrote this week, because her work kicked butt.
In this episode:

Writing is a messy process, and it shows in this episode, where I have to face the fact that sometimes you throw away words that you love. I also seek to embrace my inner-middle-schooler by remembering my own experience and forcing my friends and family to remember theirs! After all, writers often steal from real life!
In this episode:
reallyactual

Today's episode is super long but super good. Some conversations are hard to for me to press the pause button on, and this was one of them. Melanie and Jennie go over Mel's first and last scenes of her novel, which then sparks a conversation on how writers hate to tell people their ideas for fear that someone will steal them.
In This Episode:
KILLER FIRST LINE! world-building!WHY.Recommended Reading and Watching:
The Year of Magical Thinking By Joan Didion Your First 1000 Copies: The...

Let's face it. Resolutions suck.
But with a new year (and both of our birthdays smacking us in the face), sometimes you can't help but think about the things you want to change. If there's one thing I've needed to change for years, it's this: WE HAVE TOO MUCH STUFF! If my children touched it, I've saved it. If it's broken but I think it's fixable, I've saved it. If I can remember who gave it to me or how much I paid for it, I've saved it. I mean, why fill the landfills when I can fill my...

In this episode:
Melanie and I have finally, finally, graduated to writing the first and last scenes of our novels. Jennie goes over my scenes with me and in the process shares a lot of gems about the writing process. She talks about:
why today?Love Actually: really

Duration:00:37:18

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